MIT Sees Several Robberies

MIT saw four possibly related street robberies in the last ten days, two of which took place on Oct. 22 and the other two on Oct. 26, according to the City of Cambridge Police Department.

On Oct. 22 at 7:45 p.m., a male MIT graduate student was robbed on Broadway Street. Around half an hour later, two other MIT graduate students were robbed approximately a mile away on Albany Street.

The two incidents on Oct. 26 also occurred within a short span of time—approximately 15 minutes—though reports about the incidents appear to reflect some discrepancy about the exact locations of the crimes.

Cambridge Police Spokesman Daniel M. Riviello, in an interview with MIT’s The Tech, said that at 9:55 p.m. on Oct. 26 a MIT instructor was robbed in the 700 block of Main Street. The Cambridge Police log for Oct. 26 did not mention an incident in that loction, but did record a report of an armed robbery at the intersection of Broadway and Ellery Streets—about a mile away—at 9:55 p.m.

At 10:10 p.m. that night, a person, whose identity is not known, was robbed between 200 and 300 Mass Ave, according to The Tech. There was no record of this incident on the Cambridge Police log, but the log did record a robbery on Main Street at 10:07 p.m.

Riviello could not be reached for clarification on the locations of the robberies.

In three of the four robberies, victims reported being approached by two black males who “brandish a knife and relieved the victims of their wallets, backpacks, laptops, and cell phones,” according to an alert from the Cambridge Police Wednesday.

The CPD reports that the suspects are believed to be in their late teens or early twenties. One of them is described as “chubby” and the other “tall with a thin build and dark skin,” according to the alert.

Three of the five victims in these four robberies were white males between 25 and 30.

The CPD is still investigating the string of robberies and is sharing information with the Harvard University Police Department and MIT’s police department.

—Staff writer Sirui Li can be reached at sli@college.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: November 1, 2010

Due to an editing error, an earlier version of the title for this Nov. 1 news article incorrectly stated that MIT saw several "burglaries." The correct term is "robberies."